Youth Radio - Topic: Public Health

College Students Reflect On 30 Years Of HIV/AIDS

brett — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 14:48:04 -0500

This story was broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered on 6/3/2011, and was originally published on Turnstyle News..

A lot has changed since the 80’s. Or so I’m told. I wasn’t born until 1991 – the same year Magic Johnson announced that he had HIV. I’m 19 now, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people joke that Magic Johnson discovered the cure to AIDS…money.

Katherine Hood knows the same joke. She’s a senior at UC Berkeley and has grown up knowing about the disease her whole life. Regardless of the jokes, we both know HIV is still deadly serious. “I think it’s interesting because while I don’t think it’s the same sort of death sentence mentality,” says Hood, “To me if I actually stop and think about it, it still seems like a horrifying thought.”

Hood and lots of kids we talked to say their school Sex Ed classes were pretty good. Thanks to my school’s health classes, I had seen a condom by the 7th grade and knew what it was for. My mom even bought me a book called Deal With It. I remember my friends coming over after school to giggle about stick figure illustrations of sexual positions.

Sex and STDs weren’t a mystery for me, but that’s not the experience had by some students, like UC Berkeley senior Tori Partridge. She explains, “I went to this little private Catholic school and our Sex Ed was basically ‘Hey these are the diseases you can get. Don’t have sex.’ So I just sort of went into this world unprepared.”

The benefit of being in my generation is that we can turn to Google for answers. But no amount of research can prepare a person to ask their sexual partner if they’ve been tested. Nicki Ghafari is sitting at a food court in downtown Berkeley with friends. They graduated from a local Catholic high school just last Sunday, and are headed to college this fall. Ghafari knows they’re supposed to ask about their partner’s sexual heath, but the idea still makes her uncomfortable. “If you ask someone, it’s like they’re dirty in a way, like they’re gross,” she says, “personally I feel like whoever you’re with, you should ask.”

At Laney College in downtown Oakland, junior Salvador Lopez has a little more experience with this situation. He says he wasn’t afraid to have the conversation with his sexual partner, “It wasn’t awkward. They just shot the question right back, and I was like ‘I’m good.’ These are questions you still have to ask, no matter how comfortable you are with one another, just to be safe.”

My friend Elizabeth Welsh, a junior at Mills College wants to be safe, but she feels like the talk around prevention never includes her. Welsh is a lesbian who isn’t embarrassed to admit that she has, “a lot of unprotected sex.” She says, “I talk about aids and I’m informed, but at the same time I’m not using a condom in my sex. So what am I going to do? You think about it and the fears there are but how do you get passed that.” Welsh thinks prevention is mainly geared towards straight people and gay men.

No matter who you are, the saddest part about getting tested for HIV today, is that you’re not only worried about your test results, but you’re still terrified about what people might say, as least that the case for me. David Villamarina, a student at Laney College, agrees. “People get made fun of for having an STD or STI. People are judged.”

While treatments have progressed dramatically in the last 30 years, Villamarina says that society is hung up on wrong things. “We will want to be more focused on what we can do to stop it, instead of who has it. It’s not about the people who already got it. The people who already got it, they got it.”

That’s today anyway. My hope is that 30 years from now, people who “got it,” won’t have it forever.

Media and Immigrant Health-Webinar TOMORROW!

tanderson — Mon, 23 May 2011 19:02:33 -0500

Please tune into the New Routes to Community Health Webcast that will take place Tuesday June 7 from 10am-12pm CDT. This webcast will showcase voices of leadership from across the country that provides insight into how funders and community organizations can best leverage the power of media to support immigrant communities with significant health disparities. Youth Radio's own Denise Tejada and Tuere Anderson participated in the key informant interviews. To download the English version of the report, please visit the New Routes website and be sure to tune in to the webinar tomorro! Youth Radio is proud to support the efforts of New Routes to Community Health, a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Outside Public Housing, Screams... of Joy

cfoster — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 19:47:49 -0600

It was warm today in Brooklyn – a balmy 62 degrees that peeled the winter coats off bewildered pedestrians, exposed sidewalks that have for months been covered by dirty mounds of ice, and emptied scores of shrieking children onto the cement playgrounds and grassy courtyards that surround the public housing buildings in my neighborhood. After the snowiest January since New York City started keeping records, it was as if these kids had woken from a long dream and jumped directly into a game of tag.

It’s a widely held belief, at least among academics, that children living in the projects don’t play outside. But a study published in an upcoming issue of Social Science & Medicine has found that children living in public housing play outdoors for more hours each day than other city kids. The researchers hypothesize that the playground that I saw today may have something to do with that unexpected finding.

“It's possible that children living in public housing have access to community playgrounds and courtyards for children to play outdoors, which could be why we see more outside play time for them,” said Rachel Kimbro, assistant professor of sociology at Rice University and lead author of the new study.

Kimbro said that creating access to safe, open spaces is key to solving obesity problems among poor, urban children. Her study showed that the ratio of time spent watching TV to playing outdoors is an important predictor of obesity. For every additional hour the children played outside instead of watching television, they scored 1.5 percentile points lower on BMI, a measure of body fat based on height and weight.

I highlight this study because it sheds light on a central question we’ll be asking on Youth Radio’s new environmental desk. That is, what are the environmental issues that matter most to people who live in the city? We’re interested especially in the environmental problems faced by young people whose families are too busy just getting by to take part in American environmentalism. Because while that movement has proved effective over the years by changing policies that govern the way we use and conserve natural resources, it has been dominated by the voices of people who have already met their material needs. In other words, we're covering not only public parks, but public health, public safety and public housing as well.

Stay tuned for more coverage of these issues from our forthcoming environmental desk.

For Pregnant Teens, Reality TV Is Not Reality

cfoster — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:16:29 -0600

In 2008, Viacom launched a show on MTV called “16 and Pregnant” which was followed by “Teen Mom”. These shows were produced to show audiences around the world what it would be like for a teenager in high school to accidentally become pregnant and have to take care of a second, delicate life while attempting to balance their own. However, this show failed to share the truth of most unplanned pregnancies.

Though any girl can become pregnant, not every teen has the support needed to become the best parent they can be. Many girls have more conflicts than those that are presented in the media and often struggle tremendously when they find out they are pregnant. Numerous young woman all around the world deal with poverty and violence and lack the support system that would guide them through domestic problems they might encounter. Expectant teen moms sometimes have to consider the absence of the unborn child’s father.

Many of my peers regularly watch MTV and enjoy the shows that are aired. The media often disregards the large population of young people who face unpreventable conflicts and they only seem to convey messages to consumers and viewers that are privileged. It is aggravating to see a spoiled girl on a show (that’s meant to uplift other teen moms) crying about a party that they can’t go to. The cast on the shows seem to always be sheltered by parents or money and have the essentials of a good home without devastating problems.

I have never heard a teen mom in reality (as opposed to a teen mom on "reality") say that she has found help from the show to better herself as a parent. Many of the young mothers I know now struggle with financial instability because of the extra care a child requires. These facts are despite the truth that the teenagers that can relate to the show aren’t the only ones watching the show.

A House Divided by the H1N1 Vaccine

skhan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:38:46 -0600

On an early Sunday morning, my dad announced to the family that he would be getting the H1N1 vaccine and that my mother would be taking my brother and me to get it done as well.

Immediately, my brother and I refused. We both had reservations about the vaccine.

We decided to have a family meeting--not heated, but civil.

My dad asked us why we were against it.

We said that even though we might run the risk of getting the swine flu, we couldn’t predict the possible side effects of the vaccine.

My dad didn't say much after that.

So my brother and I stayed home. But my parents still went to get their shot.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately depending on your perspective), the clinic had run out of the H1N1 vaccine. So my parents ended up getting a regular seasonal flu shot.

But, a day or two later, my worst fears came true. My mom came home with a scary fever. It really frightened me because I had never seen my mom shake so much. I did my best to take care of her, and within about a week she was better. Fortunately, my dad is okay, but, still, I worry about him.

My mom's reaction to the vaccine itself was one of the reasons why I did not want to take the shot. I asked my dad whether my mom's fever made him regret his decision to get even the regular flu shot. I wondered whether he would still considering getting the swine flu shot when it would become available.

He said that the shortage scared him, because his main reason for taking the vaccine was to keep people around him--both his family and his community--safe.

But he stressed that the most important thing was for us all to take care of ourselves.

And I agree with him. I may have foregone the vaccine, but I'm still doing my best to stay safe. I try to wash my hands frequently, cover my mouth when I sneeze, and stay home from work and school when I'm sick.

What I disagree with is the mad rush to get vaccinated. Whenever anything bad in my lifetime has happened or was predicted to happen-- like Y2K, 9/11, avian flu--it seems that people freaked out and didn't think about the long-term effects of their actions.

I think people should do a lot of research before getting something injected into their bodies.

To a large extent, the mainstream Spanish-language media was my dad's main source of information about the vaccine. He’d heard that if you don’t take care of yourself, you can die within three days. My dad said he believed the news because the show he watches had interviewed doctors and other specialists, so he trusted the information. And he said that the ultimate proof was that people around the world were sick and dying.

Still, I was skeptical.

Maybe we differed in opinion because we get our news from different sources. My dad listens to morning talk radio shows and the 6 o'clock news on the Spanish-language channel Univision. I, on the other hand, get my news from the internet, newspapers, and public radio. The only TV news that I occasionally watch is CNN. Everything else seems to me too sensationalist and one-sided to take seriously.

I find it hard to trust what the pundits on TV say.

I feel as though I'm being told what to do--as if I'm a child--rather being informed to make my own decisions.

And, much to my parents' chagrin, I won't come to a decision about the vaccine until I'm satisfied with the information out there.

Previously:

Watching Your Health (and Teeth) Chip Away

wilmer — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:54:45 -0500

The following is a transcript of a story first broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition.

There is one number that you’ll hear in most health care stories. More than 45 million Americans don’t have insurance or are underinsured. As the debate over heath reform moves out of committee and onto the House and Senate floor, there is another number that a lot of experts wish would factor into the debate: the numbers of Americans without dental insurance. Jennifer Obakhume visits one family dealing with that reality.

Cesscia Rojo and her sister Adriana are young and healthy, except they have dental issues. Major ones. And no insurance. So Cesscia says, when they need care, they’ve been traveling to Tijuana, Mexico.

“I went to Tijuana and that’s where they started the root canal. When I came back, all the problems started with the drugs dealers, so I wasn’t going back to TJ anytime soon.”

The sisters could get medical and dental plans through their colleges. One option is about 500 dollars a semester. But they can’t afford it. So Adriana used a free clinic this summer in Southern California to have a broken tooth pulled. But she needs more dental work.

“I still have a hole in my mouth. It hurts sometimes if I chew bread cuz it goes in there and it hurts, but other than that it’s good.”

The sisters live at a home with their parents. Cesscia says they enjoy cooking dinner together every night.

"See really you know, Mexican culture, we, they hold on to us until we’re married. And we’re not married, and we’re here until we finish school. And then we’ll take them in. And we’re just going to stay together."

No one in the family has insurance. The family has lived legally in the US for years, but Cessica says her relatives often go to Mexico for medical treatment. Almost a million Californians get health care in Mexico each year, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

“I know a lot of my cousins have done it and my aunts and uncles have done it. It’s about half as much as you’d pay here, which is still a lot of money, but much less. You’re not going to get a dentist for sixty bucks to patch up your hole. It’s a couple grand."

Cesscia says Tijuana isn’t really an option for medical treatment right now. She still worries about the violence there. So the sisters get basic services, like immunizations, at school. For acute or chronic conditions, they’re on their own. Adriana says she ignores her health issues, like her broken tooth.

"My main concern is that I still have an infection, but we can’t do anything about it, so I try not to think about it."

Both sisters hope they can just postpone dealing with their health until they finish college. Then they hope to earn enough money to buy insurance.

This story is part of Youth Radio’s series Generation Invincible about health care for young Americans.

Budget Crisis Worries HIV-Positive Youth

cfoster — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:37:46 -0500

School is out, and like many 14-year-olds in San Francisco, Carina Aguilar is looking forward to summer – going to the movies, playing basketball and traveling to Utah with her family for a kayaking trip.

“I will have a really busy summer,” says Aguilar, who wears her dark brown hair in a pony tail and talks in a soft voice.

But the summer would be more fun, she says, if she didn’t have to worry about her HIV medication. She gets monthly shipments of meds delivered to her house. Drugs can cost anywhere from $250 to $5000 per month for somebody living with HIV.

State-funded HIV/AIDS programs are among the health and social services that hang in the balance in the coming weeks as California lawmakers try to close the state’s $24 billion budget deficit. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in May proposed an $80 million cut to the Office of AIDS; the Legislature this month pushed back with $35 million in cuts. Meanwhile, young people are trying to make sense of what it will mean for them and other youth, a population that accounts for about half of all new HIV infections.

Diagnosed at birth, Carina’s not sure how she contracted the virus: “I think it was because my mom did not have as much protection, so that’s probably how I got it. Otherwise, my stuff got in by breast milk.”

Thanks to a constant regime of medications paid for by Medi-Cal, Carina’s been able to keep her viral count so low, it barely even shows up through testing.

“If it is undetectable it means that you are really healthy,” she says. “Your immune system is healthy, basically your whole body is healthy.

It also means Carina’s less infectious than someone with a high viral load. And less burdened by what sets her apart.

“The only time that I am reminded that I have HIV is when I'm drinking my medicine,” she says.

Despite her anxiety about state cuts to AIDS programs, Carina’s lucky. Her Medi-Cal benefits aren’t likely to be affected by the proposed cuts. But 24-year-old Ricardo, who didn’t want me to use his last name, can’t count on those protections.

“I know I am one of those patients that I have to have medication,” he says. “If not my life is at jeopardy.”

Ricardo says he’s not eligible for California’s Medicaid program because of his salary. If his drug costs go up, or if he loses his job as an AIDS outreach worker due to program cuts “my medication would cost more than my rent,” he says. “So it would either be my life or be on the streets.”

“We've seen what it means for people not to have treatment for a while,” says Kevin Bynes, youth services director at the AIDS Project for the East Bay. “We've seen the people get diagnosed one week and then be dead the next. The drugs that are used to manage HIV for many people are the only lifeline.”

And the prevention and testing programs that get state funding are often the only way HIV negative young people learn how to stay that way. So while the Governor says California faces a “worst case scenario” with this budget crisis, young people living with HIV/AIDS, or trying to avoid it, are hoping the situation doesn’t get even worse.

Arai Buendia's story was produced by Youth Radio and BeyondTheOdds.org. It comes to you from Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0, an initiative of AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio, Incorporated. This project is made possible with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee Talks Health Care

denise — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:50:05 -0500

Congresswoman Barbara Lee held a roundtable discussion on health care in Oakland this Monday. Lee talked about the injustice of 47 million uninsured Americans and the need for health care reform to take place. She also talked about the key role young people play in health care; she tells young people to continue to be hopeful.

Swine Flu Facts for Teens

cfoster — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:05:36 -0500

"Omg, i'm so scared!" a friend at school texted me yesterday on my phone.

I texted back immediately: "Why? whats happening, r u ok?"

"Ms. jolie might have the swine flu,” she wrote, referring to her French teacher, “and now everyone has to get tested."

And that’s how I first heard about the swine flu outbreak. Over the past few weeks, the pandemic that started in Mexico has spread to the U.S. with reports of 91 people infected across the country, including two confirmed cases in Bay Area. (Test results aren’t back about whether my friend’s French teacher is actually infected.)

I started reading about it and saw how many school age youth are among the confirmed cases. Now I was even more worried. So I called Dr. Lisa Winston, an epidemiologist at San Francisco General Hospital. She’s in charge of controlling the hospital’s infections and outbreaks and she gave me some advice about how to control my own swine-flu-phobia.

Youth Radio: I’ve noticed that a lot of the people infected with the swine flu are young and school age. Why is that?

Dr. Winston: You’re right, it has seemed like a lot of kids have been infected. For example in New York City, a lot of the confirmed cases are in school age kids who went to one school. And it might be because kids are really social people and they have a lot of contact with other people. And they tend to gather in groups in places like school. That’s a good way for influenza to spread.

YR: So it sounds like schools are a dangerous place to be during a flu outbreak.

Dr. Winston: It probably depends on how dangerous the flu is and how it’s affecting people that year. Every year when the flu circulates in the U.S., kids do commonly get infected in their schools. But most of the time, kids don't get that sick from the flu, so even though they might have to be out of school for a couple of days, most of the time school age kids get better from things like the flu very quickly.

What people are trying to figure out now is if the swine flu is different and if it's going to be more dangerous for young people.

YR: What are some precautions teenagers in particular can take to lower their risk of getting infected?

Dr. Winston: Teenagers should do the same thing that adults do to try to prevent getting the flu. I think sometimes for kids and teenagers, it's not on there radar screen. Things like: cleaning your hands using the bottles of alcohol sanitizers that you can get at the drug store works very well; making sure you try to stay a few feet away if somebody who is sick; and then making sure that if you cough or sneeze, that you're covering that. We’re trying to teach people rather coughing into their hands, to do it into your shoulder or your arm, so you're not contaminating your hands all the time.

Here's more from Derek's interview with Dr. Winston:

(download mp3)

A Country With No Homelessness

dwesley — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:34:09 -0600

Going to school and getting a lot of information for free is the best thing ever (it's up there with having a lot of money). This is my last year in school, yes, I'm finally a senior, and I'm going to be free at last. I will be free from waking up extra early to get on BART to be on time for school. But the hard part about being a senior is that you have a senior project to do - 20 written pages, three interviews, and a 15 to 20 minute presentation. While it may sound easy, it's not, because you have to plan your project early on. I started planning my project when I was in the 11th grade. My senior project is on homelessness and why homelessness occurs in the United States.

My biggest question is why, if the United States is one of the richest countries in the world, are so many American people homeless. What is the government, federal, local, and state doing to prevent this? What is going on in American that the Government is not doing much? I picked this topic to show the problem and show possible solutions. There are many things that need to be done in America to solve homelessness because there are many people who don't have a home and haven't for a long while. Many people think that homelessness is homeless people's problem. But it's all our problem and we can do something to help out because homelessness isn't caused by one thing. Nobody wants to be homeless and what if that was one of your family members? We should all help out and every little bit helps. Me, I'm going to Glide Memorial Church every Wedesday and Sunday to help out as much as I can.